Bring The CHCSP Into Your Agency

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In House Sales Training To Grow Your Business

October 1, 2008

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In this issue...

-- Bring The CHCSP Into Your Agency

-- Develop Your Business Growth Strategy

-- The Academy for Home Care Sales and Marketing

-- Teleseminar - Recruiting and Selecting Non-medical Caregivers

-- About the Author

-- Permission to Reproduce

Welcome,

. . . to Stephen Tweed's Leading Home Care Report, the premier online newsletter for CEOs and executives of America's leading home health care agencies. (For strategies and insights on how to grow your Private Duty non-medical home care business, we invite you to subscribe to Private Duty Today, our newsletter for non-medical home care.)

Bring The CHCSP Into Your Agency

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Two weeks ago, I was in San Antonio, Texas, with Dr. Tray Dunaway and Michael Giudicissi to conduct our Certified Home Care Sales Professional workshop. Ninety six sales and marketing professionals from home care companies around the country joined us for three days of high impact, interactive sales training.

The energy in the room was contagious! When you get that many sales professionals in one room, you cannot help but get excited. These folks are really pumped up about home care sales and marketing!

Last week, I was back in Dallas, Texas to conduct a sales and marketing planning session with a large, multi-location home health care company. We refined and refocused their three sources of competitive advantage. We developed their business growth strategy and defined their primary and secondary marketing plans. Then we laid out the schedule for training their account executives. The result of the planning and training is that their 14 sales professionals will receive the training they need to qualify for the Certified Home Care Sales Professional ^TM designation.

This week, I'm working with a home health and hospice agency in New England to begin their sales and marketing training and coaching. It's pretty clear that the fast growing home health agencies are focusing on sales and marketing, and are willing to provide the training and coaching for their sales team to help them accomplish their growth goals.

Last Saturday, I was in San Antonio, TX again speaking at the annual meeting of a large home care company. Dexter Braff of The Braff Group in Pittsburgh spoke right after me. Dexter made an important comment that I wrote down. "The fastest growing home care companies have dedicated sales people, and this is the #1 predictor of growth."

Dexter works with home care company owners who want to add value in anticipation of selling their business at some point in the future.

For Information on the CHCSP designation

Develop Your Business Growth Strategy

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To be one of those fast growing home care companies we talk about, there are five important steps you should consider:

Set aside time to develop your business growth strategy
Clearly define your three sources of competitive advantage
Provide in-depth, interactive training for your sales representatives
Provide ongoing coaching for your sales team
Set up a sales and marketing scorecard to track results and manage performance

Develop Your Business Growth Strategy

How will you grow your business? Will you focus on internal growth, selling more home care services in your current marketplace? Will you expand into new territories by opening new offices or acquiring other agencies? Will you increase revenue by introducing innovative new products or services to your current marketplace? Having a clearly defined growth strategy is important for every home health agency.

Clearly Define Your Three Sources of Competitive Advantage

What makes your agency unique? What are the sources of your competitiveness? What makes you different from the other home health agencies in your market area. Home care is becoming more competitive than ever before, and it's really critical to be able to separate your agency from the competition.

Train Your Sales Team

One of the biggest challenges facing home health agencies that want to grow is finding experienced, proven sales professionals. There just aren't that many out there. So, if you can't hire them, grow them. Put together a process to recruit, select, train, and coach your own home care sales team.

Coach Your Sales Team

Selection and training by themselves are important, but not enough. To keep your sales representatives focused and on target, you need to provide regular, ongoing coaching. Just like sports teams and athletes need coaches, so do home care sales professionals.

Set Up a Scorecard to Measure Sales Success

Define the Critical Measures of Success for your agency, and provide information to your sales team on a monthly basis. The Critical Measures of Success you want to report and discuss are:

Total Patient Census
New Referrals
New Admissions
Conversion Ratio
Percentage Medicare
Medicare Episodes
Average Revenue Per Episode
Total Revenue
Gross Margin $ and %
Net Profit $ and %

Then work with your home care team to set goals in each of these areas.

A focused, dedicated, well trained and coached sales team is the number one predictor of growth success in home care. Let Leading Home Care help you develop your growth strategy, training your sales team, and provide the resources you need to grow your business and get ready for the future.

The Academy for Home Care Sales and Marketing

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November 5, 2008 - Columbia, Maryland

Sponsored by Maryland National Capital Homecare Association

If you are on the east coast of the United States, you'll want to consider attending or sending members of your sales and marketing team to our upcoming Academy for Home Care Sales and Marketing in Columbia Maryland, between Washington D.C. and Baltimore.

This full day event will feature Stephen Tweed, CEO of Leading Home Care, presenting the techniques proven to sell more home health care and non-medical home care services.

The future is bright for home care, but competition is growing. Your ability to differentiate your company through skilled sales and creative marketing is more important now than ever.

Teleseminar - Recruiting and Selecting Non-medical Caregivers

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The biggest barrier to growing your private duty home care business is finding enough caregivers to meet your growth goals. Once you find them, you need to keep them.

Stephen Tweed has just completed the single largest research study ever conducted in our industry to discover the best methods to recruit caregivers. Stephen will be sharing the results of this survey, and describing in detail how you can apply these top techniques to get the people you need to grow your business.

Stephen will share with listeners the results of the industry leading research. You won't want to miss out on this opportunity to grow your Private Duty Home Care business.

Finding and Selecting the Caregivers You Need in Non-Medical Home Care

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
2:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Central, 11:00 am Pacific

About the Author

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Stephen Tweed, CSP, is Chairman and CEO of Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company. For over 25 years he has been a recognized leader in strategy and leadership development for home care companies and associations. He is the author or co-author of five books, four of which were written specifically for the home care industry. He has served on the boards of directors of three not-for-profit home care agencies, and has served as interim President & CEO of a $25 million homecare company.

Stephen is a past-President of the National Speakers Association, a 3500 member international society of experts who speak professionally. He is also the father of a 38 year-old son who is physically disabled and uses the services of home care on a daily basis.

Meet the entire Leading Home Care Team

Permission to Reproduce

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Permission is granted to healthcare publications, associations and companies to reproduce this article in your publication, or to distribute copies to your leaders, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Stephen Tweed's Leading Home Care Report. Copyright 2008 Stephen C. Tweed. To receive a FREE subscription to this newsletter, log on to www.leadinghomecare.com."

Contact Leading Home Care

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email: stephen@leadinghomecare.com

phone: 1-866-209-5101

web: http://www.leadinghomecare.com

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